Nationalism"As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. That statement is not an attempt to say when war will come, but only that it is sure to come. That fact was true before the atomic bomb was made. What has been changed is the destructiveness of war." - Albert Einstein It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. Voltaire “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. .. In saying, ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others’, you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: its moral values.” Emmanuel Macron There are now two very different sets of political morality plays. one is inherently selfish and nationalistic; it leads to walls and moats to keep others out. The other recognizes that populations and ecosystems are interconnected in ways that don´t recognize borders. Political leaders (like India´s home minister or U.S. president Trump) can close borders to keep Bangladeshis or Mexicans out. Or leaders (like German chancellor Angela Merkel of French president Emmanuel Macron) can welcome global pacts such as the Paris Climate Accord that recognize a common threat to the human species requiring unprecedented cooperation. This is the Way the World Ends, How Droughts and Die-Offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes are converging on America by Jeff Nesbit. (pg 261) To the extent that the United States, or any other country, reverts to ultra-nationalism and stands against institutions such as the United Nations and the ICC, it endangers the future of not only Americans, but everyone else. Enemy of Our Future One country cannot gain without another's losing ... Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbor. He who wishes that his fatherland might never be greater, smaller richer, or poorer would be a citizen of the world. It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars: BibliographyRighteous Strife: How Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union by Richard Carwardine Lincoln's Peace, the Struggle to end the American Civil War by Michael Vorenberg |